[Grammar] One of my favourite places is (or ARE) the shopping malls?

[englishteacher79]

Would it be better to say, "One of my favourite places IS the shopping malls" or "One of my favourite places ARE the shopping malls"?

I guess you're talking here about all the shopping malls.

Thanks.

 

[GoesStation]

The subject is singular: one of my favorite places. Therefore the correct choice is is.

If the subject is plural, you need are: My favorite places are shopping malls.

You should drop the definite article in your sample sentences.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Exactly right. Englishteacher, is your native language really English? If it's not, you should correct your member information.

 

[engee30]

If the subject is plural, you need are: My favorite places are shopping malls.

Or to keep the wording closest to the original:
Two of my favourite places are shopping malls and theme parks.

 

[jutfrank]

You can also say:

Some of my favourite places are the shopping malls.

 

[Tdol]

You might hear someone say are, though- it's the kind of slips that is easy to make when speaking.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

You might hear someone say are, though- it's the kind of slips that is easy to make when speaking.

Yup. We're just showing ET correct standard English. ET will hear every use and misuse out in the world.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Native speakers, especially teachers of English will get this right - in an ideal world! However, this is the sort of question that many people are not too sure about. I don't know about Australia, but it's possible in England to graduate in English without ever having been corrected on such points.

Same in the US, of course. We're just trying to share standard English grammar rules. The world will show ET all the variations. It's like studying jazz. First you learn the rules, then you break them.

On common-error issues (who versus whom, he or she versus they), I sometimes tell students that while it (whatever it is) is wrong, it's common, natural, and generally fine for informal speech.

Which is kind of what you're doing, I think.

Englishteacher: When in doubt, diagram: One | is / malls.

 

[Raymott]

I don't know about Australia, but it's possible in England to graduate in English without ever having been corrected on such points.

I believe that Australian English teaching courses are now concentrating on postmodernist pedagogy and intersectional discourse.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

When I was involved in teacher training in the first decade and a half of the 21st century, I soon learnt that I could not take it for granted that my trainees knew what I knew at about 13 when it came to an understanding of English grammar and 'correct' English.

I state this as a fact, not a criticism. Much of what I was taught in the late 1950s was based on prescriptive works written half a century before by people who had rather narrow ideas of how 'educated' people should speak and write.

Yeah, that's why I'm always falling back on reference books. What I "know" isn't always what everyone else knows.

 

[Tdol]

I state this as a fact, not a criticism. Much of what I was taught in the late 1950s was based on prescriptive works written half a century before by people who had rather narrow ideas of how 'educated' people should speak and write.

I do teach things that go against what I was taught as a child because those prescriptions no longer apply.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I do teach things that go against what I was taught as a child because those prescriptions no longer apply.

Happily so! It's good to be able to freely split infinitives!

Changing word definitions are also interesting, like lend versus loan and house versus home.

Loan was strictly a noun when I was a kid. Now it's also a verb that means lend.

A home used to be a place where people lived. Now it can also mean ​house.

But the one that bemuses me the most is that a secondary dictionary definition of literally is now figuratively.

 

[GoesStation]

But the one that bemuses me the most is that a secondary dictionary definition of literally is now figuratively.

That one has been bemusing people at least since 1827.

 

[Roman55]

for at least since

Are you sure?

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

That one has been bemusing people for at least since 1827.

Literally?